I want to take the opportunity to talk about really examining, I mean spending a good 4-5 hours going deep into your PPC campaigns and weeding out the keywords or poor quality scores that could be driving up the cost per clicks for all your keywords.  These are all things we do on a monthly basis for my clients over at amplifyseo.com but if you’re running your own campaigns you may not.

Dragging Keywords

The first step I’d take a look at is how your keywords are performing.  Assuming you did your keyword research and have 500+ keywords in your campaign take a closer look at the ‘bottom dwellers.’  If a search phrase has not driven a single click or maybe it’s note even generated a single impression int he past 30 days mark it for potential removal.  Then take a look at a number of factors over time (average placement included) and if you see a poor performing tendency it’s time to let the phrase go.

Quality Score

I’m assuming that since you’re reading this blog you are not a complete beginner to PPC or SEO.  With that said, I’m still surprised at how few campaigns I take over for clients where they haven’t opted to display their quality score column.  You need to know what your quality score is as it directly impacts your CPCs (cost-per-clicks).  Enable this column on the ad group page by selecting ‘Customize Columns’ and then ‘Show Quality Score’.

We want to see 8s and above (what Google deems to be ‘Great’) however depending on how large your keyword portfolio is anything 7 or above will do.  Everything else (6 and below) you need to work on.  Read up on quality score factors and get those quality scores as high as possible.  Remember your QS effects not only your CPC for that phrase but all your phrases are effected.

These two really are a 1-2 punch for PPC and should be done continuously.  However, it’s spring so take this opportunity to do a bit of campaign clean up and if you do it correctly you’ll be very surprised and pleased at the end result.